🧵 Thursday Thread | Do You Know Your Attachment Style?
And can you guess which person in this photograph is me?
This photo is my Head Start photo. My teachers (look at that swanky pink pantsuit and those white boots!) said I was “eager to please” and had a “strong will.”
A while back, a friend of mine told me she was reading Mel Robbins’s book, Let Them. It was the first time I’d heard of Mel Robbins, even though she’s apparently super famous. Somehow, no matter how much I think I’m following along, I tend to actually be living under a rock.
Anyway, I have not read Let Them, but I did get curious about Robbins, and as I fell down the rabbit hole a bit, I stumbled on an episode of her podcast where she interviews Thais Gibson, founder of The Personal Development School and author of Learning Love, who offers a particular perspective on attachment theory by integrating traditional psychological concepts with subconscious reprogramming techniques. She has a program through which she says people can transform their attachment style in as short a time as twenty-one days, using techniques that engage the conscious mind to speak the language of the subconscious mind and redirect/rewire the subconscious beliefs that inform attachment.
Okay, so if you know about my background at all, whether through my essays here or through reading my memoir, The Part That Burns, then you can probably guess my attachment style would be fearful-avoidant, sometimes called disorganized.
However, I’ve done a lot of work on myself as an adult—not just therapy and somatic and creative and meditative work but also the in-the-trenches work of relationships and marriage and mothering. So, while fearful-avoidant would inevitably be where my attachment style started, I believed it had transformed toward something more secure.
I still pretty much believe that.
In fact, I might even hold up as examples of my progress certain—what would I call them, traits? habits? patterns?—that I’ve exhibited in my adult life, one of which is my willingness to do things that scare me in order to grow. I have long felt, if not pride, then at least a certain sense of accomplishment for “doing the work” so that I can do the work I love—which has always included very public components—while building a life I love.
I’ve even noted how this willingness to throw myself out of my comfort zone is one of the reasons I became so inventive and entrepreneurial. I am willing to fail—I consider this a core trait and an asset! I am willing to risk failure (and rejection), in order to pursue my dreams.
And this openness to stretching, to risk, to failure is, I have often said out loud, especially to my husband and kids, one of the traits I value most in myself and am most grateful for. I have believed to my very core that this openness is an earned openness, an openness I acquired through doing the work to heal.
Well, imagine my surprise when Thais Gibson told Mel Robbins, while describing the traits and patterns that show up for fearful-avoidant types, that these individuals are often high-achieving and tend to make good entrepreneurs because they’re willing to throw themselves out of their comfort zones repeatedly, they can really thrive when they challenge themselves in new ways.
What?
Seriously?
These traits I thought were the result of my hard work to heal are … the wounds themselves?
When I overcame the strange sense of shock in hearing what Thais Gibson said, I could fairly quickly see how it seemed—if I thought about it—potentially true. After all, when did this fierce willingness to leap and leap begin? Before or after I did or even started doing the so-called work to heal?
Hmm. Was I healed when I took myself on a Greyhound Bus from St. Paul to Cuernavaca, Mexico on my sixteenth birthday in search of an adult caregiver who loved me? Was I already healed at age 23 at six months pregnant when I opened a phone book in that small rural township and looked under “C” for counseling because the sexual abuse of my childhood was rearing back up and I could not breathe? Was I already healed when at 24 I wrote a grant for breastfeeding support in that rural township and met with the local hospital administrators to describe the program? Or the grant the following year, which was funded, to start an arts school in that township?
The answer is no, I was not. I was healing, but definitely not healed. And I could trace those questions farther back, too, to my year in foster care, and the many brave things I did not only to survive, but to protect my future self and the future life I wanted to live.
I look at that little girl in the Head Start photo—the one whose teachers said she was eager to please and had a strong will—and I realize, Oh, that was me all along. I didn’t earn or achieve that … it really was the wound itself, which had, as wounds sometimes do, a little crack where the light got in.
Anyway, it was surprising, to say the least. I thought I knew more about attachment theory than I did. And I’m curious now to learn more about Thais Gibson’s work with attachment theory and healing.
I’m still mulling over what Thais Gibson said. I feel kind of like I did when I first encountered Bessel Van der Kolk’s work, and kept saying, “That’s me! That’s me! That’s me!” when he said things I had never heard before about trauma, like how people like me often don’t like playing sports, because we’re disassociated from our bodies and afraid of the ball. I felt so seen!
And now, I’m curious to hear from all of you …
What do you know about attachment theory and your own manifestation of your attachment style in your life, whether now or in the past?
Are there moments or events in your life that stand out as examples of your attachment style in action?
Have you ever worked to transform your attachment style to become more secure, if you were not already a securely attached person?
Do you have words of wisdom to share about attachment styles?
Do you reject the theory?
Have you specifically and intentionally explored your own attachment style, including work to transform it?
Obviously these are personal questions, so you should never feel coaxed to share anything you don’t want to talk about! But since I find that writing and psychology are such close cousins I sometimes can barely distinguish them—aren’t both about what it means to be human, and how we transform?—this is kind of my jam. If it’s your jam, too, I’d love your thoughts.
Oh, also! Can you guess which kid is me? Remember, eager to please and strong will. I feel like I should offer a prize for the right guess, though I bet you’ll all be able to guess—so, maybe a pizza party? That’s what I’d say if I were still teaching middle school!
Love,
Jeannine
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